Editorial special issue ‘Public Pedagogy and Sustainability Challenges’

This special issue is developed within the scientific research network ‘Public Pedagogy and Sustainability Challenges’ funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). The network has brought together educational theorists, sustainability education researchers, sustainability transition researchers, artists and activists from Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, Norway and South-Africa. They share an interest in the relation between education and societal transformation and wanted to deepen and widen the understanding of the public role of education in the face of sustainability challenges through interdisciplinary research collaboration. The aim of the network and, hence, the special issue is to progress theory development and research on public pedagogy with a focus on sustainability challenges. It addresses issues such as how education can play a democratic role in addressing sustainability challenges, the conditions and obstacles for that, implications for the design of sustainability education practices, and theoretical, methodological and empirical implications for researching on sustainability education as public pedagogy.

During the network’s kick-off symposium in March 2017 at Ghent University, Belgium, we broadly explored the topic, addressed a variety of issues, and discussed diverse practices which gave rise to a variety of questions. For example: In the face of sustainability issues where stakes are high, values in dispute, facts uncertain and decisions urgent, there has been a plea for ‘post-normal science’. Do we also need something like ‘post-normal education’ (Block et al., 2018) then? And, if so, how to understand and design it? It is often argued that education should question the status quo and challenge dominant, unsustainable systems, but does education not always have a very radical, system-challenging potential (Säfström, 2020)? What about the relation between education and democracy? Should democratic debate about what is desirable precede (normative) education; should it come after (fact-based) education, or should it be situated within (pluralistic) education (Öhman and Östman, 2019)? A related topic of discussion is the role and In the face of the tension between radically democratic and pedagogic concerns on the one hand and a strong sense of urgency regarding sustainability concerns on the other: can we take our time to ‘study’ sustainability issues (Masschelein and Simons, 2013) in times of urgency? How can concrete actions practices, in the here and now, to make the world more sustainable become acts of public pedagogy (Schuermans et al., 2017; Van Poeck and Östman, 2021)? And is experiencing such practices in itself what makes them pedagogical? Or is it about creating occasions to make these experiences the object of study? Etc.

During a second network meeting in January 2018, we focussed on conceptualisations of public pedagogy in the specific context of sustainability issues. We further elaborated on the network’s key concepts as well as on the vital challenge how to relate ‘public’ to ‘pedagogy’, and to ‘sustainability issues’. Addressing the questions what it is that constitutes the public and what it means for something to be public, we approached the public as a multi-layered construct composed of many human and non-human elements and always specific in particular places and contexts where ‘we are all in this together’. We also discussed under which conditions public pedagogy can be seen as ‘pedagogy’ and how to take care of the pedagogical so that it does not slide away in individualistic, mechanic and economic approaches to ‘learning’ (Biesta, 2006). And whether it is possible to develop an alternative discourse of learning, taking departure in the awareness that there are important things related to sustainability issues that we do not know (radically not know) and that therefore ‘learning’ is important. In the face of the profound effects of sustainability issues we discussed how education can facilitate change without determining what this change should look like (Van Poeck and Östman, 2020), or whether we should firmly resist the promise underlying dominant discourses on education that it can/should solve problems.

These explorations led us to three important, shared considerations: (1) Sustainability challenges are severe and urgently require radical action (e.g. IPCC, 2018); (2) Sustainability challenges can often be characterised as ethical and political challenges for which no clear-cut, uncontested solutions exist (e.g. Ashley, 2005; Van Poeck et al., 2019) and (3) Education should not be reduced to an instrument to solve societal problems (e.g. Biesta, 2006; Masschelein and Simons, 2013; Säfström, 2011; Säfström and Östman, 2020; Todd, 2011, 2016). The tension between these three assumptions brings about interesting issues for further conceptualising public pedagogy in the context of sustainability challenges. We considered it promising to look for concepts with the potential to serve as mediating factors between sustainability and public pedagogy and identified normativity, re-politicising, activism, commitment, care, heterotopia, passions, engagement (putting oneself at stake), radicalness, disruption, plurality and dissensus as such mediating factors which deserve to be further conceptualised in this context.

This provided us with a theme for the subsequent workshop at Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland, in November 2018, that is, how activism, action and change influence public pedagogies, motivated by the urgency of sustainability challenges. We engaged with the question what public pedagogy facing sustainability challenges can learn from social movements of fundamental change such as the successful ‘repeal the eight’ movement in Ireland. A social movement leading to the abolishment of the amendment in the Irish constitution regulating and condemning abortion. The grassroot tactics developed, among them the practice of women witnessing in public about their horrific experiences of being denied abortion in Ireland and its devastating impact on their lives, helped change public opinion to support the repeal and making abortion possible. To speak publicly, right through a culture of silencing women’s voices, opened a space in which it was possible to reorient oneself to hear what was before noise. Ailbhe Smith, a prominent Irish feminist and one of the leaders for the campaign, said in her lecture that it often happened that older men after listening to the women speaking, with tears in their eyes said they had no idea how bad it was for those women. It was as if they heard the voice of women for the very first time, rather than what before only had been noise for them. The strategy used was one of public pedagogy in the way it activated a particular form of speech, locating itself in concrete public settings, resembling traditional ways of organising public life in Irish society, while giving voice to those who before been silenced. To make public by attaching value to that which before was only included as excluded as Rancière (1991) says, not only emancipated single voices, but contributed ultimately to a profound change of public opinion as well as the very constitution. Women spoke in their own single voice representing all women, and therefore appeared on the stage as political subjects. Such public pedagogy is based on the power of discourse, grassroot movement, voice and political subjectification, which educated the public in matters before unseen and unheard. As such public pedagogy also relies on a certain aesthetics, of forming spatial politics, to stage a drama, deeply rooted in the everyday practices of concrete communities, bridging rural and urban experiences transforming social, natural and political ecologies at play in the 21st century. Therefore, the discussion on a public pedagogy facing the acute demands of sustainability challenges is enriched by contributions of artists focussing on the political aesthetics of those challenges. The workshop in Maynooth worked through input from multidisciplinary research, artists and social activists to identify strategies for ‘breaking the crust of convention’ Rorty (1980: 379), to be able to face the reality of the sustainability challenges in front of us and to find ways of acting accordingly.

During the meeting in Maynooth, we organised workshops in preparation of this special issue. This resulted in five articles that, in varied ways, further conceptualise, theoretically clarify and/or empirically exemplify different aspects of the ongoing conversation in the research network.

Lovisa Bergdahl and Elisabet Langmann engage in the further conceptualisation of (the relation between) the key concepts of ‘public’, ‘pedagogy’ and ‘sustainability issues’ and formulate a pedagogical response to the complexity of sustainability challenges. Their paper on ‘Pedagogical publics: Creating sustainable educational environments in times of climate change’ focusses on the existential and emotional dimensions of climate change and makes a distinction between ‘public pedagogy’ as an area of educational scholarship, on the one hand, and ‘pedagogical publics’ as a theoretical lens for identifying certain qualities within educational environments, exploring what potential this distinction has for rethinking public pedagogy for sustainable development, on the other hand. Taking inspiration from Bonnie Honig’s call for creating ‘holding environments’ in the public sphere in response to democratic need, the authors develop this political notion into an educational notion, arguing that to foster pedagogical publics as holding environments requires an environment that ‘holds’ people together as a pedagogical public. Such an environment, they specify, makes room for new rituals for sustainable living; it invites narratives that can frame sustainability challenges in more positive registers; and it reinstates an intergenerational difference that serves to give back hopes and dreams to adults and children in troubling times.

Danny Wildemeersch, Jeppe Læssøe and Michael Håkansson address activism as one of the potential mediating factors between sustainability and public pedagogy that the network explored. Their paper on ‘Young sustainability activists as public educators: An aesthetic approach’ presents a theoretical framework for investigating young sustainability activists as public educators. In line with Latour’s argumentation concerning the need to create new attachments to the Earth, the authors highlight the importance of aesthetics and experiences conceived as integrated sense-perceptional, emotional and intellectual faculties. Furthermore, the paper employs social movement theory and draws on the work of Melucci and Rancière to address the Youth for Sustainability movement’s role in creating new attachments to the Earth, to explore the movement’s collective identity making, and to stress the ability to interrupt the distribution of the senses. Empirical examples of youth activism for sustainability are discussed in relation to the potential of children and young people to act successfully. Finally, the paper moves into pedagogical theories, in particular Biesta’s distinction between pedagogy for the public, pedagogy of the public and pedagogy for publicness, to explore how this kind of youth activism can be conceived as public pedagogy.

Joke Vandenabeele and Mathias Decuypere sketch the outlines of what they call a minor public pedagogy related to practices in the here-and-now. When people gather and repair broken devices together, it seems obvious that they gain all kinds of competences such as repair knowledge, skills and attitudes. They can also experience deeply a transformative learning process about, for example, the need to keep planetary boundaries within the sustainable limits of life. In their paper on ‘Repair tables, broken vacuum cleaners and posters: Weaving new worlds together in response to breakdowns’, however, the authors approach the educational dimension of repair cafés differently. Analysing repair cafés as situated, entangled, and local assemblages of human and non-human actor as specific, designated places (and times) where something is at stake, they introduce the notion of a minor public pedagogy. The paper presents a detailed analysis of the particular pedagogic moments that emerge in these encounters between humans and things. This public pedagogy has a minor navigational capacity in the sense that it doesn’t create clear signposts of where to go as humans but rather propels humans into a sensory sensitivity for inhabiting the world in the here-and-now.

Erik Andersson focusses on a very different practice: sports. He develops an approach to ‘public pedagogical leadership’ by addressing the function of sports organisations’ pedagogical leadership in community change and capacity building towards sustainability. His paper on ‘Public pedagogy and leadership in sports organisations: Futebol dá força for sustainability?’ states that sport is a key educational and leadership arena for societal change and sustainability challenges. Sports organisations, the author argues, have the potential to provide, initiate and create processes, situations and spaces for learning, socialisation and meaning making that go beyond traditional schooling. Through an empirical study focussed on soccer and the non-governmental sports organisation Futebol dá força (Football gives strength), the article develops knowledge about how sports organisations’ public pedagogical practices and leadership can support community change towards sustainability.

Petra Hansson and Johan Öhman’s paper on ‘Museum education and sustainable development: A public pedagogy’ engages with the question how museums to rethink their approaches to society and education in response to sustainability challenges. They argue that museums have the potential to become key public pedagogies for sustainable development and thereby play a crucial role in encouraging participation in sustainability issues. Due to the complexity of sustainability issues, and the potential disturbances of and difficult experiences resulting from exhibitions displaying them, they consider a theoretical framing for the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museums to be necessary. Museum education where sustainability issues are displayed, they argue, would benefit from a didactical framework in which the relation between teaching, learning, content and situation is considered. Furthermore, a theoretical framework explaining the relation between exhibition, visitor and educational situation could inform pedagogical discussions about how to incorporate sustainability education into museums. They suggest a transactional conceptualisation of museum pedagogy for sustainability museum education based on John Dewey’s educational and aesthetic philosophy and Louise Rosenblatt’s theory of reading and writing as a potential approach to the teaching and learning of sustainability issues in museum education.